The bombings
in Brussels shocked Belgium and Europe to the core. The senseless violence that
left 300 injured and 35 dead in the attacks at the Maelbeek Train station near
the EU headquarters and the Brussels airport struck at the heart of the Europe
and the European Union.
Even as the
hunt for the elusive white jacket bomber has ended with the arrest of Mohamed
Abrini, any relief will be short lived. Europe is now back to square one in its fight
against the Islamic State global terrorist campaign.
As was
discovered when Belgium authorities arrested Europe’s most wanted fugitive and
the only survivor of the Parisian attack cell, Saleh Abdelslam, the new wave of Islamic extremists are predominantly European nationals who know the ins and outs
of the European Union and have large familial networks that provide them support
in Europe.
This has led
many to agree with French President Françoise Holland who stated “This is not over,” and that security forces are
trying to uncover the ‘wide, extensive’ network of jihadists who are behind
these attacks.
A Game of Cat and Mouse
For now it is
a game of hide and seek. Belgium Foreign Minister Didier Reynders has admitted
previously that Brussels authorities thought there were at least 30 terrorists
remaining at large in the city. Finding these terrorists will be difficult
because these groups have morphed into something more than religious
extremists.
According to
security experts, many of the terrorists operating in Europe have become
integrated with organised crime groups or the Mafia. Intelligence experts like Yan St-Pierre, CEO and
counter-intelligence adviser for the Modern Security Consulting Group, have
argued that the Islamic State have tapped into
‘Mafia-type organized crime, with highly
sophisticated smuggling operations, for logistics support like transporting
people, issuing fake identity papers or selling weapons’.
The Islamic Mafia
The
development of such an entity is not surprising given the clan based nature of many Arab and
North African societies. In Belgium for example, Moroccan-Belgiums often
existed within a very tight knit expat community. Brothers, cousins and extended
family relations are often very close and will provide support to one another without
asking questions due to clan based loyalty to their friends and family.
Infiltrating
and monitoring these identity networks is extremely difficult due to their close
nature. One only has to look at the
Paris and Brussels attacks to note that many of the attackers in both incidents
were family or friends, some from childhood (Mohamad Abrini for example was friends
with Saleh Abdeslam and his brother Ibrahim who blew himself up in Paris) and
both the el-Bakraoui brothers and Mohamad Abrini were known criminals and had spent time in
jail, as had Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the leader of the Paris attacks.
Europe’s Soft Underbelly
While these
gangster-style Islamic networks make infiltration difficult, both the Paris and
Brussels attacks were a study of the miscommunication that hampers the European
Union. The open nature of the European Union and the freedom of movement
provided by the Schengen Agreement means that it is a hard to coordinate
security measures between countries and share relevant intelligence. Security
forces in the Netherlands, Sweden, France and Belgium were clearly aware that there
were terrorists operating within their borders but due to miscommunication and
protocol failures many warning signs were missed or discounted.
After the
Brussels attacks it was revealed by the Turkish Prime Minster that Turkey had
deported one of the suicide bombers Ibrahim el-Bakraoui after catching him on the
Turkish-Syrian border in July 2015, but worse than that was the information
that the FBI had informed the Dutch government that both el-Bakraoui brothers
were wanted by the Belgium authorities in March in connection with the Paris
attack and yet both remained free.
Border controls in Belgium were also lacklustre during the weeks
prior to the attack in Brussels with a recent report detailing the use of
untrained border guards to identify those arrivals who were high risk against
an EU-wide terror database, SIS, which contains alerts for the names of several
thousand foreign fighters, as well as stolen and forged passports.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian architect of the Paris
massacre, had boasted that he was able to go from Syria to Belgium as border
guards failed to identify him, despite his face being in the media.
Perhaps this
was sheer luck but more likely this oversight was caused by the economic cuts
many European nations have made to their security budgets over the past few years. Many are now
simply relying on sophisticated facial recognition software and high tech surveillance
which does not utilise costly human investigators who can monitor
suspects daily.
As a result, intelligence experts such as Claude Moniquet, a retired agent for France’s external intelligence service,
DGSE, who now runs a private intelligence company in Brussels, fear that
Europe will face further attacks.
“What we expect is a multicity, multi-target
attack at the same moment, and it will have terrible consequences,”
Racism and Radicalisation
Many are not surprised. For years racism against Muslim
immigrants has been a problem in various European nations. In France it has
lead to heated debates and riots over Islamic headdress. In Belgium, Moroccan
Belgiums often face discrimination and marginalisation due to their
nationality.
Many believe this lack of opportunities and societal
rejection is the reason behind many of Europe’s youth becoming radicalised. One
young Belgium
Moroccan told a CNN reporter that,
"The
Belgian state rejects children and young people; they say, 'They are all
foreigners, why should we give them a job?' They fill us with hate, and they
say we aren't of any use, so when young people see what's going on over there
[in Syria], they think 'Well OK, let's go there and be useful.'"\
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